Neveryóna, or The Tales of Signs and Cities

Appendix B: Acknowledgments

YOUNG WRITERS TAKE THAT most communal object, language, and perform on it that most individual act, creation. Years pass; and, doing much the same as they did when younger, older writers take an object now known to be, if not exactly private, certainly more idiosyncratic, individual to individual, than an empiricist philosophical tradition is comfortable with and perform on it an action now known to involve so many communal facts, from generic conventions and ideological reductions to just plain help, that the Romantic notion of ‘individual artistic creation’ becomes hugely shaky — if it has not, indeed, crumbled. The older writers have not necessarily learned “craft” any better than the younger; nor have they even — necessarily — learned more of the language itself. They simply have more interesting critical material in which to observe play.

For the communal aspects of both talent and tradition, then, I gratefully make these acknowledgments:

Frank Romeo’s film Bye Bye Love, about two small-town adolescents who journey to New York City and return, suggested a structure for the entire novel. But our almost daily conversations for four years, which covered the making of his second film, The Aunts (in which a present eye looks on a past moment), often touched on the encounters, the textures, the psychology, and the intimate details of life in upper New York State vis-à-vis life in New York City. They have left their imprint from first chapter to last.

Joanna Russ’s Kittatinny: a tale of magic (Daughters Publishing Co.; New York, 1978) supplied the image for Gauine. To anyone who sees any mystery or resonance in the closing image of that fabulous beast, I commend the tale from which — with permission — I stole it.

Ihab Hassan, preparing his paper ‘Cities of Mind, Urban Words,’ was generous enough to ask me a question. The ensuing correspondence helped me develop some of the conceits herein.

Walter Abish’s paper ‘On the Familiar’ (with its side glance at the unbearable) helped me contour much of the material in Chapter Nine.

Charles Hoequist, Jr, has entered into the spirit of Nevèrÿon scholarship so good-heartedly that his contribution must be grateful acknowledged.

Teresa de Lauretis introduced me, among her many generosities, to Umberto Eco’s work in semiotics; his essay ‘On the Possibility of Generating an Aesthetic Message in an Edenic Language’ (in The Role of the Reader, Umberto Eco, Indiana University Press; Bloomington, 1979) was directly stimulating.

Camilla Decarnin read, reread, and criticized the text in a detail for which any writer must be grateful.

Loren MacGregor added some mechanical corrections to Decarnin’s list for which I am most thankful.

Bernard Kay took time in his convalescence from a bout with lung cancer to make copious and useful marginal notes for which I thank him sincerely, and in light of which I have tried to make intelligent repairs.

Robert S. Bravard, of the Stevenson Library at Lock Haven State College, most graciously sent me two pages of cogent comments, which have been the occasion for much thought and — hopefully — some meaningful changes.

Marilyn Hacker read the manuscript and offered a number of useful suggestions. Once again, I am grateful.

My copy editor, David Harris, besides the usual haggling over commas and restrictive and non-restrictive modifiers, offered a number of suggestions for fine tuning to the content. I thank him for them.

Karen Haas, my Bantam editor, has been as supportive as an editor can be throughout the production of a long and often difficult book.

And Grafton Books’ Nick Austin is simply and wholly the hero of the corrected edition.

Thanks is also due to Frederic Reynolds, Pat Califia, Lavada June Roberts, Mischa Adams, Luise White, Sally Hassan, Gregory Renault, Catherine McClenahan, and, indeed, a number of others who escape memory this sitting, but all of whom, now and again, added a twist to the thread from which this text is woven.

Anne McCaffrey shares an April 1st birthday with me. For years I have wanted to write something touching on dragons that could serve as a kind of joint birthday present to us both. Happy birthday, Annie.

As the beautiful Hispanic pop song, ‘Eres tu’ borrows the opening notes of Mozart’s Zauberflöte, Act II, this text may be read, by some readers, as borrowing not only from those sources directly acknowledged but also from Albee, Bédier, Kafka, Balzac, or Baudrillard. If such readings initiate dialogue, so much the better; if they close dialogue off, so much the worse. With that in mind, I must add that any reader who normally skips footnotes may skip the headnotes with which the various chapters begin with — certainly — no greater loss. (‘While we sit discussing the word,’ quoted Christine Brooke-Rose at an MLA meeting some years back, ‘power works in silence…’) They only attempt to begin, by assertion, what Diderot attempted to begin by denial when he entitled a story Ceci n’est pas un conte, or what Magritte attempted when he entitled a picture of an upright brier Ceci n’est pas une pipe, or — indeed — what Guilden attempted when he made a colored poster in which scarlet letters proclaimed across a rose field (after having made one in jade and kelly portraying the same text) This is Not a Green Sign.